Tuesday, 29 September 2015

Very well, alone.

Deep inside the Westminster bubble, there is a Tory machine at work plotting the referendum campaign. As I understand it, they are largely fence sitter tribalists and those positioning themselves to make a healthy sum for their retirement pots by misdirecting funds. There are jobs to be grabbed and reputations to build. Winning the damn thing is a distant second to any other consideration. The danger of ceding the campaign to them is clear. As I noted in my previous post this battle will require some serious courage of conviction. I doubt they have it. Here's why...

Tonight I was going to post a verbose and long ass rebuttal of this tiresome piece of propaganda attacking the EEA Norway option. It's a classic misrepresentation of the argument. The Norway option is
mooted by Owen Paterson (as far as the bubble knows) is mooted as a stepping stone interim measure (a departure
lounge). It is not the final destination - just an off the shelf means
of achieving single market access in the mid term.

Springford also
ignores the meat of the Paterson argument in that the majority of
single market rules are not made by the EU. Instead they are Codex,
UNECE, UNEF, UNEP, Basel2 and so on. There is so much omitted from
this article we can either throw it out as a dismal piece of amateur
propaganda or we can just assume Springford is profoundly ignorant.

Readers of this blog will now be well aware of the role of international organisations in regulating the single market and will also be aware that the EEA\Efta option is one we have since approached with caution in light of the new EU treaty.

The Telegraph is running naked propaganda along the lines of repeating a lie often enough. The volume of repetition eventually grinds us down as we tire of writing rebuttals. But were I to write yet another rebuttal of the "fax democracy" meme, I would be falling into the trap. This is what they want us to spend our time arguing the toss over.

This is all irrelevant to the real battle. The real battle will be over whether Cameron's reforms are worth having. It is the view of the Referendum Planning Group that there is no real attempt at renegotiation under way, Cameron is a passenger, and the main concern of the EU is the consolidation of the EU around the Eurozone. They can risk fobbing Britain off with an empty promise because they have Cameron as a salesman. It has worked before with the phantom veto.

As much as we have spoken about the need for a positive message, and a thorough intellectual case, the last weeks of the campaign will require that we are visceral in our attacks on Cameron's credibility. Undermining the character of the Prime Minister is critical. The last thing we need is a main Leave campaign falling into the trap of trading facts and figures over trade deficits and banana regulations, attacking all the decoys, when the real enemy is the PM.

In some respects, the Conservative Home claque uniting behind Matthew Elliot's embezzlement scam referendum campaign are already political failures. They are hasbeens and neverweres - so they can and will attack the PM, but nobody will care what they say. Similarly ex ministers will be accused of holding a grudge and as for the fence sitting wait and see brigade like Steve Baker, these people still have some party aspirations and so will be selective in the battles they pick. Such people are not trustworthy. Arguably, there is nobody inside the political inner circle who can be trusted. I can't even say for certain that Daniel Hannan won't pull a fast one.

Consequently those who really want out must be cautious to ignore the Tory campaign because it will have its own agenda and it will be fighting the wrong battle. This is where Arron Banks could have been the white night, but in being so obviously associated with Ukip and running a depressingly inept message, unless he is willing to take on the expertise then he's another unwelcome player on the field.

The bottom line is that anyone serious about leaving the EU must not wait for leadership and should not be counting on any support from anybody. We are are on our own with nothing but our own personal resources. The clever boys and girls in Westminster will have the money to waste and they will congratulate themselves on their flash websites and glossy leaflets, but the real fighting will be done by me and you.

It will involve targeting local leaders and opinion formers with high quality, concise and clear arguments offering a better alternative than what Cameron can offer and good reasons as to why the PM cannot be trusted and why the "reform" on offer is just the status quo re-bundled. Neither my time or your time is well spent shoving their useless leaflets about the price of groceries through letterboxes. The memes concocted by these self-serving, money grabbing whores and prima donnas are wholly useless and irrelevant to the fight.

As much as we need our core of bloggers, we will need prolific social media users, graphic designers and Tweeters. The big boys can buy their TV adverts and newspaper columns and we cannot match their reach, but with concentrated teamwork and forensic precision, we can target our limited resource and use the machine to our own advantage. The scattergun tactics we have seen deployed thus far are insufficient.

Ultimately if we want a win then we will need a winning mindset. That mindset starts with a few basic rules and assumptions.

1. Forget Ukip - divisive and cannot reach the swing vote
2. Any machine headed by Tories is just Ukip in a better suit
3. Arron Banks and Leave.EU are preaching to the converted
4. This is a people's campaign and politicians of any stripe are not welcome.

As far as we're concerned, there is no Leave campaign. There is a biff bam sideshow the media can speculate over and we can't hold our breath waiting for them to get their act together. We can hope but I don't recommend waiting on the men with the money. In the end, we don't want their material, their input is mostly harmful and anyone who comes waving the flag of their party or tribe should be met with suspicion. It's up to me and you. We are on our own.

In this, there is the elephant in the room. The media will not consult the real people doing the heavy lifting. We will see the Farage's and the other drongos on TV, and the media will report it as though it were an election because they don't know how to do anything else. That is the second major concern after the Tory con job.

While we must wait until the latter days of the campaign to tear holes in the Prime Minister, we have a whole two years to slam the media and question its fitness to represent the arguments. The Telegraph article linked above is published without a counterweight argument and uses wilful omission of crucial arguments without right of reply. It is written by a consultant to an EU funded think tank - and the Telegraph doesn't see fit to tell us this.

We have written at length on the matter of media corruption and the low grade, amateurism that now passes for journalism. Court circulars like the Spectator and the Telegraph must be regularly and routinely humiliated. While they are seemingly eurosceptic, they are ultimately loyal to the Westminster orthodoxy. The Daily Mail isn't eurosceptic and if you wanted to design a false flag news vessel it would look a lot like The Daily Express.

In this battle, even the right wing press is our enemy, the Tory party is our enemy and while we may not doubt Ukip's sincerity, their lack of tactical acumen means they are best neither seen nor heard.

The bottom line - there is no party, newspaper or campaign organisation that can save us. We have no allies, we have no lifeline and in this, the official campaign to stay in is the opponent of the least importance. Even the EU takes a back seat. As much as this is an opportunity to free Britain from the EU, it is also a chance to hit the media hard and shatter its unbreakable influence for good. To win, that's the battle we have to win first.

In that regard, the main campaigns are especially unhelpful in that they are using their money to fight this campaign through the media. They are fighting on their battlefield. We have to ignore the media when we're not attacking it and we need to bypass the politicians and we have to make this a people's campaign. It's about me and you and you decide your own level of involvement. Don't wait for a leader or a uniting banner because I can promise you, that's not coming. If we wait for them, all we'll get is a large bill for the taxpayer, a future inside the EU and a Matthew Elliot laughing all the way to the bank. He gets paid either way.